Israel and the Arab Spring: Quote Unquote

Two quotes — one prescient, the other deolusory — about Israel and the Arab Spring got my attention.

I’ll start off with Robert Fisk, whose sense of irony about the Syrian assault on Hama is spot-on:

That massive fleet of armour, one should add, was paid for by the Syrian people in order to be protect Syria from Israel — not to protect the regime from the Syrians themselves.

Screen grab of Al-Arabiya footage from Hama

On the other hand, there’s this Arab activist quoted in the NY Times who says something Israel has been stating for years:

“We always said, ‘If you want to liberate Palestine, you need to liberate yourselves,’ ” said Gamal Eid, founder of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, in Cairo.

Hooey. For years, the Arab message was that Israeli-Palestinian peace was the key domino to resolve other Mideast conflicts, end Arab hatred of the US, isolate Iran and global jihad, etc. Now, Arabs claim they always said the opposite?